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‘Kat!’
It was the last sound she heard before her head hit against the rockface as she slid joltingly, vertically down and she lost consciousness. In her last moment of awareness something struck her as odd. Angelos hadn’t sounded angry any more …
For a timeless moment Angelos was paralysed, watching Kat’s helpless body jolting downwards, as if she were nothing more than a rag doll. Then, eventually, it reached a ledge and stopped.
There were voices. Thea could hear them. Dimly, as if from a long, long way away. Gradually they got louder. Penetrated the fog in her brain. Roused her to wakefulness at last. She blinked her eyes open.
An elderly man in a white coat, with a kindly face, was looking down at her. She realised she was lying in a bed, in a clinical-looking room. A nurse was standing behind the doctor.
‘My dear fraulein, how are you feeling?’
The accent was strongly Swiss, but there was a concern in it that somehow made her throat tighten.
‘What happened?’ she asked weakly. ‘I … I fell …’
‘Yes,’ agreed the kindly doctor. ‘But most fortunately, although you have some injuries, none are major. However, you are not well enough to leave hospital just yet.’
‘How did I get here?’ Her voice was hazy.
‘Mountain Rescue brought you in, summoned by Herr Petrakos. You were unconscious after falling. Now, my dear fraulein, you must promise me something. Our mountains are beautiful, but they can be very dangerous. You must promise me you will never try anything so reckless again.’ He looked at her over the top of his glasses. ‘You have been very fortunate. You have only abrasions—and your ribs are bruised, not broken. But you could have died, fraulein—truly, you could have died.’ His voice changed, became less sombre. ‘Now, we will need you to stay the night here, because we must watch for concussion. But I believe you may see Herr Petrakos—he is most anxious to see you.’
Her face closed. ‘I don’t want to see him.’
The doctor’s eyebrows rose. ‘No? But he is most concerned, fraulein, most concerned. Indeed, I would say he is—what is the word in English?—ah, yes—quite frantic about you.’
She could only stare. Angelos? Frantic?
‘I don’t want to see him,’ she said again. Her voice was without expression.
The doctor looked at her questioningly a moment, then simply nodded. ‘As you wish. I will let him know.’
Outside in the waiting area Angelos was pacing up and down, his face taut. When the doctor emerged, he pounced.
‘She will make a ful
l recovery,’ the doctor told him immediately, and at once words in Greek broke from Angelos, relief knifing through his face. But his expression darkened at the doctor’s next words.
He picked his words carefully. ‘She does not wish for any visitors just now. Perhaps this afternoon,’ he said, temporising, seeing Angelos’s eyes flash with emotion at the refusal. ‘However, Herr Petrakos …’ He was picking his words even more carefully now, and Angelos stiffened. ‘I think you must take pains to impress upon the fraulein that it is … unwise … to attempt any form of mountain-walking if there is any alcohol in the system. Even from the night before.’
Angelos’s brows snapped together. ‘Alcohol?’ His voice was disbelieving. ‘She doesn’t drink alcohol!
The doctor’s eyebrows rose. ‘Indeed? And yet her blood shows its presence …’
‘Impossible,’ said Angelos curtly. Then, abruptly, memory stabbed. He’d taken the cognac glass out of her hand …
But she couldn’t possibly have drunk cognac? Why? Why would she do such a thing?
Emotion knifed in him again. There was so much he’d thought impossible about her …
His hands clenched, fighting for calm. For sense. For comprehension.
‘I have to see her—it’s imperative, absolutely imperative!’
But the doctor remained adamant, and seething with frustration—so much more than frustration!—Angelos could only return to the chalet. His thoughts were dark and turbid, and after he had interviewed Franz and Johann were like snakes writhing inside him.
Apfelwein—that was what she had drunk last night. Not apfelsaft, innocuous, harmless, apple juice, but an alcoholic drink. Surely to God she would have noticed the difference?
But would she—could she? If she never drank wine, or even cider, could she have known at all that it was alcoholic? Cold ran through him. Cold—and more than cold.
